The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 321: "Smokin'" Ed Currie—The Ring of Sting

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

The Dirty Jobber, Guinness World Record-holding pepper breeder, and CEO of the PuckerButt Pepper Company, explains how he replaced drinks and drugs with dopamine-inducing capsaicin. Spoiler Alert: It involves a literal angel. Ed's company www.puckerbuttpeppercompany.com  

It's the way I heard it, episode number 321. This one is called The Ring of Sting with Smoking Ed Curry. Ed Curry indeed, yes. Ay, aye, aye. Fans of Dirty Jobs might have seen Ed Curry. He was featured last year on the show. He's just a remarkable dude. And anybody who's a fan of super spicy foods will probably know him, since I think he's the king of the Chili's.

he has a farm in Fort Mill, South Carolina, called Pucker Butt Farm. He's in the Guinness Book of World Records for creating the hottest pepper on the planet in the solar system, in the galaxy, in the universe, for all I know. Well, that we're aware of. It's currently the Carolina Reaper. These things just keep getting hotter and hotter and hotter. Look, when I met Ed, I mean, we talk about this kind of right out of the gate, but it bears repeating here.

It was such a weird day for me. So many things were going on. I had a terrible, terrible toothache. We weren't even filming dirty jobs. We were there to film Ed for another project that didn't really have a name. We just wound up using the footage because it was so great for dirty jobs later on.

But a lot of interesting things happened to me on that day at Puckerbutt farm, the least of which certainly wasn't the fact that I got to know this guy and wanted to know him more. Because Chuck, you got to admit, it's tough to put Ed Curry in a box. Yes, nobody puts Ed Curry in a corner or a box.

What I loved is, you know, when he was talking about doing this show that he did on Netflix, and they kept directing him, and he said, and I hate that. I hate people telling me what to do. And it made me think of someone else, Mike. It made me think of someone else that I'm fond of. Who shall remain nameless.

There's a lot that Ed and I have in common, and there's a lot that we don't. But what you're about to hear in this wildly eclectic and rambling and totally unscripted conversation is some thoughts on nutrition, some philosophy on addiction, a great deal of chemistry, and a little bit of Old Testament.

Ed has been on the road to recovery for a long time, and it was an unbelievable, journey this guy has been on. And at the center of it, I suppose at the center of it is his faith. But right next to his faith is Capsason, the active ingredient in the hottest peppers in the world. And he is on a walk. He is a legend in this area. And he doesn't fit into any box. He's a PR nightmare, I'm sure, for his company, because he'll say whatever he wants to say. And he will make you want to try. He'll make you want to try these painful things.

He's a man who lives outside his comfort zone. And for that, he's to be applauded. Let me tell you, he goes deep, too. He is a recovering addict. And he tells us his conversion story. And his conversion story, you know, how he got clean is nothing short of... Don't wreck it. Don't wreck it.

Nothing short of amazing. And I was on the edge of my seat. and we were both kind of like, okay, whoa, ho, ho, ho, whoa, I would have one more time. And look, I loved it. First of all, his energy is just infectious. And I'm one of the people who you just spoke of that he'll make you want to try this stuff. I'm like, I want some. I want to do this.

I want some capsaicin, more than I can handle probably. It'll put a sting on your ring. Yes. Which is why this is called the Ring of Sting. It's episode 321. He's my friend Ed Curry, and he is not like anyone. You know. It's all coming up right after this. Well, are you sick of it yet?

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They just started. It's okay. It's Brandon, right? In the background? Yeah, that's Brandon. That's Brandon. Yeah. Does you have you all hooked up?

Yeah. Has me all hooked up. I love it. What kind of microphone is that, Ed? It looks like you got it from another planet. You know, Brandon does some kinky stuff. It's called a blue. It's called a blue, but it's bright red, yeah.

Yeah, I know. I didn't understand it, but I'm not going to comment. Well, you sound great. You look great. I feel good. So do you. How do you know I feel good? No, I said, you look good, too.

Oh, oh. I kind of remember the truck ride, you know. Oh, my God. It was a little bit, uh, um. Yeah. Well, look, that day, that day, Chuck would have happened. How long ago was it, Ed? When did we meet?

Do you remember exactly? It was, uh, almost two years ago now. Coming up on two years. It was the day before you sang with John Rich, Santa's got a dirty job. Right. Yeah. Well, that was only,

one of the extenuating circumstances, Ed, that made the whole trip so weird for me, right? We weren't even shooting dirty jobs. We were shooting. I didn't know what we were shooting. We were calling it a show called People You Should Know, and I read about Ed Curry, and I thought, I really want to know this guy. So we just went to film there, and then all your people pulled me aside and said, dude, you got to understand, this guy is going to hurt you. He wants to hurt you. He loves people, but he likes to hurt them with the peppers, and they'd heard I was supposed to record this song with John Rich, and they were like, you don't understand. You're not going to be able to talk if you start eating these things. So I was totally in my head about it. And I also had, remember,

I had a toothache. Yeah, Dr. Bob said to say hello, by the way. I saw him yesterday. So Ed knows everybody in Fort Mill, and probably everybody in both Carolinas. And he made a quick call and got some antibiotics on the case. Meanwhile, he had me rubbing caps a capsaic all over this inflamed molar. I don't know what fixed it, but by the end of the day, I just didn't care anymore, Ed. By the end of the day, no one cared anymore. That was a fun day. That was great. What was the feedback like? Because we took the footage and, you know, I didn't have a show put together yet. I could put it in. And then all of a sudden, dirty jobs came back. And I was like, oh, let's put it in dirty jobs. Was the feedback any good? The feedback was fantastic from, you know, our customer base,

all the people who work with me, and also from like the local media and stuff, people were like, wow, that was a really good job. And I said, man, this is only a quarter of what they did. I wish some of the other stuff was on there. Because we had some really good time and got into some deep discussion while we're there, you know, not just talking about peppers. No, you're a deep well. And I remember saying to Zach when we left, I don't think we got to the bottom of it, but we got a lot further down than I thought. The other thing I wanted to tell you about that day that I feel kind of bad about was that

I just didn't know enough, right? I knew there was a giant community of pepperheads. I know my own personal tolerance for heat. But I didn't know about that show called The Hot Ones. I didn't know the extent to which you were considered and are considered sort of a god king in this world. You were just this sweet, quirky middle-aged dude standing in this giant field of scrotum-shaped fruits dangling from vines. And you came up and you hugged me. And then we went off on an adventure.

So, you know, I hope you had a good time doing it. I did, but I've learned so much about peppers and you since then that I scarcely know where to begin. Well, to be honest with you, it was one of the best days of my life. I counted in the top ten, okay? I had nothing but fun that whole day. And I got to learn a lot about you and your guys, too, because I had only seen you on the show or listening to your podcast.

And I think I got a little bit more than that with you being present, you know. I should hope so. Yeah. So I want to talk really in depth with you about a couple things, your own story, obviously. But let's start with this obsession with peppers, not just yours. But when did this happen? When did the country really latch on to this? Oh, and by the way, I watched episode two of We Are the Champions and I loved it on Netflix. And I think that that's going to play an even bigger role, I guess, in just getting the whole crazy world out into the mainstream? Really, it's the media that's catching up to the craze. The craze, my take on it is that when they open the doors to immigration back in the late 80s, early 90s, and more of the Asia Minor influence and the Southeast Asian influence in Africa and Central America and South America, you know, when we were growing up, exotic food was

going to the Chinese restaurant down at the corner. Okay, there wasn't a lot of different foods. So in the late 80s, early 90s, all these cultures came in and they brought with them their foods and they started opening restaurants and people, okay, let's go try what a Thai restaurant is as opposed to, you know, Chinese. And that caught on really quick. People don't understand that like in 2004, hot sauce overtook ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise as the number one condiment in the United States. Really? You know, 2006, it was salsa, got into second place.

The general public in America caught on to this craze in the early 2000s. It wasn't until I got the Guinness record in 2013, and an AP reporter did a story that went worldwide on it. that the rest of the media started catching on to this. Hey, there's something going on here. But literally, literally, I'm quoting a study that Bonnie Plants did. They did a study of 50 million households in the United States because they wanted to see Wood Reaper plants sell. And 37.8 million of those households identified themselves as eating very spicy food.

and over 32 million of them knew me by name. Okay, and this was in like 2017, 2018. So the culture is out there. It's the media that is catching up to that culture. I get it. I get it. It's always a kick when the headlines catch up to you, right? You know, it happened with my foundation.

It happened to some extent with dirty jobs. guess. But the thing I'm curious about, it's not just our fascination with spicy food. There's always been adventure eating and there's always been, you know, I think a pretty broad palette for people who are willing to experiment. What was new to me was the straight up embrace of the pain. Like that's not eating. That's endurance. And when I left your place down there, Pucker Butt Farms, Is it farm or farms? Farm. It's the Puckerbutt farm.

Just one farm, just one but. Yeah. Is it true or did I hallucinate this? Because I was hallucinating some that day. Pucker butt was suggested to you by some church ladies? Yeah, church ladies from the Charlotte Rescue Mission. They said every time they tried something I made, it made their butts pucker. So I said, if don't make your butt pucker, it's not a puckerbucker.

They cackled so hard. I trademarked it that day. That's fantastic. And look, both of you, every time someone says the name, they smile. You know, it's a God-given name. You just can't help but giggle when you hear it, you know? It's a great name, but it's ironic because really when you eat a couple of these peppers, yeah, I suppose you're butt puckers, but then it opens wide.

Yeah, no. And then... There can be an evacuation, as we like to say. An unscheduled evacuation. Poor Zach, I'm pretty sure he's still wearing, you know, an adult diaper after that whole experience. You really put a hurt on him. Yeah, and then I sent him even more painful stuff to his house just to have fun. Wow.

He really committed to the bit. Yeah. Honestly, Chuck, I thought he was kind of laying it on sort of thick, just so people know. What happened toward the end of the day was, had I known we were shooting dirty jobs? Had I known this episode or this segment would have wound up on that show, I would have eaten a Carolina Reaper. It would have been my job. I can't do that show and not do that. But we weren't doing that show, A, and B, I had to record this song with John Rich.

So Zach stepped in and ate one of these things or enough of it. And what happened to him, Ed, like from a physiological standpoint and a gastrointestinal standpoint, point, a chemical standpoint. Explain what happens when you put that amount of heat into your body. Okay. Well, if you remember, he was playing the tough guy. Okay. I can handle everything. And I just was laughing because I knew, you know, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. And the first thing that happens, when you put that Carolina Reaper in your mouth, okay, you're like, oh, wow, that's sweet. You know, you don't, you expect it to hurt right away. But it tastes good. Okay. And then the heat starts coming on.

It starts like in your throat and just works its way up until it's like you got a charcoal brokette in your mouth. Then comes the fight or flight response. Zach went to the flight response. He was a patsy. I'm sorry. He went down like a cheap card table, man. He just collapsed.

He started sweating immediately. Your body, it's a chemical reaction that your brain perceives as heat. There's no action. actual heat and peppers. There's a nerve receptor that only mammals have, TRVP1, that reacts with the capsaicin to send a single to your brain that this is fire, don't eat it. So your body reacts in certain ways. You start sweating, just like if you're hot outside in the sun, your skin flushes and that's, you know, it's trying to cool down. But other things happen, like your mucous membranes run and your saliva runs and you start getting the jitters and Zach immediately started

shaking and freaking out. He didn't know what to do. I wasn't sure what to do either. I thought he was doing it for the cameras, but he wasn't. No, he wasn't. It's a 270-pound man with a giant Jeremiah Johnson beard and enormous snot bubbles forming at the end of his nose, tears streaming down his face, calling for his mother as he lay flat on his back after dropping the camera. It was good TV. After dropping the camera and hitting the floor. And that's when I really like to lay it on thick. When they're on the floor, you really got a, you know, you got to kick in and, you know, let them know.

Sit there, if you remember, I was munching on a bunch of stuff talking to them. And I'm like, oh, really, Zach, come on, get up. You guys did a duel, didn't you? Where it was like you each had to eat. Yeah, we did the duel too. I can't believe he got up and did that. What exactly is that? Describe that, the duels.

So we made a chip. It's literally one potato chip coated with pepper X powder. And pepper X is one of our new peppers that we're probably going to do the Guinness World record with this year. All the legal stuff is done. I just got to convince everybody it's time. And if they don't like it, I'll still pull the trigger. But it's coated with pepper X dust.

So when you chew on it, it's like, Oh, this is a potato chip. But all that powder gets stuck everywhere. And then the heat starts building on. And then, you know, you try to drink water and then it just spreads it all over. Once it gets to your gut, you start getting cramps akin to a menstrual cramp. So Zach was doubled over with menstrual cramps in a heartbeat. I mean, he couldn't even take it.

It was rough to watch. Those things scare me. And just so people are clear, it's, you can literally buy a box. It's called the duel. It comes with two thick potato chips treated as Ed has described. And I guess you just eat them and then stare at each other. And the first one to collapse in a pile of regret loses. And then you get a coin to show off.

Say, hey, you lost. Yeah, you get a coin, right. But, I mean, what's to stop people from ordering these things and just dropping one into the big pile of potato chips at the party? just stepping back and waiting to see what happens. You know, people do that stuff all the time. We used to make Reaper Peanuts. And literally, this guy came in every week.

Every week his office would put out peanuts and pretzels and stuff. And he would buy these Reaper peanuts, which were stupid. They were just stupid hot. No one but me and a few others liked them. And he would take these things and he would go to the peanut bowl and he'd mix them all in there. just to watch people suffer, you know. And, you know, I kind of like them for that. I gave them a discount.

But it's just, you know, it's a thrill-seeking behavior. See, what also happened to Zach, if you remember, is capsacin fills the dopamine receptors in your brain like narcotics do and releases a huge flood of dopamine and endorphin into your body kind of akin to a runner's high. So people like me who are in recovery really like that feeling, you know, but people like Zach who is on the ground, bawled up, crying for his mom, shaken, don't know what to do with it. So I think that part scares more people than the actual heat part because they're like, oh, I lost the feeling in my arms, you know. If you remember, he kept on touching his arms going, I'm so cold.

I'm so cold, he was saying. I'm so cold. There's like 90 degrees in that room. Yeah, it was. I want to go back. I really want to believe you're telling me the truth. And it's not that I doubt you. It's just that now that I know you,

I realize you're the kind of guy who really would, you know, you would spin one if you thought you could get away with it. Yeah. But this idea that the heat you feel after you eat a chili pepper or any of your peppers. is a kind of imagining, you know, it's your brain telling you it's hot. It's not the actual physical pepper. Correct.

If we know that intellectually, why can't we just ignore our brain and ignore the feeling of the heat? We're human, okay? We are human and there's a chemical reaction that's triggering that nerve receptor that sends the signal to your brain. and we can't do anything to stop chemistry other than use more chemistry. We have found that like there's certain heart medicines that turn off the TRVP run receptors, and those people can't feel heat so they don't taste it at all. There's other things on the market that, you know, will stop the reaction from happening. But that's just cheating.

It's about the pain. If you talk to someone who's climbing a mountain with their fingers, you ask them why they're going to say because they achieve the goal they wanted to achieve. That has got to be some painful shit. I'm not ever going to try climbing a mountain with my fingers, okay? My fingers would fall off. I'm an old man. Thanks for calling me a middle-aged man, by the way.

You're welcome. You're welcome. That's the best compliment I've had in a long time. My kids say I'm old so old. Born in the 1900s, you know. How old are you? I'll be 60 this year. There you go.

Me too. See, there you go. We'll live to be 120 and we are middle-aged. Yeah. The three of us have 180 years of combined experience here. Yeah, well, that's a lot of knowledge and a lot of wisdom. But there's also a lot of idiocy, too. So I'm still not done with this idea, though.

If the peppers were as hot as they actually seem to be on a physiological level, wouldn't they burn through our esophagus and through our stomach lining if they were really as that hot? Do do do do do do do do do. Dumb! Well, people are still raving,

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You see birds eating peppers all the time. You know, you think a little one ounce bird, two ounce bird eats a whole pepper, they're going to die. They don't feel it at all because they don't have that receptor that causes the chemistry trick. All that stuff you see on the Internet about, oh, it burned a hole in my esophagus or my stomach. That's garbage, okay? It's the crap food they're eating that is causing the medical issues. You know, people chugging a bunch of milk or eating it with wings. or whatever. That stuff does not happen from pepper. You go pretty much anywhere else in the world

and say you have an upset stomach, they give you a cayenne pill until you eat pepper to make your stomach feel better. Okay. But it's only here in America where we have, you know, 200 different kinds of pharmaceuticals that they want you to take to calm your stomach, that you don't get the little two-cent pill of pepper. How much of your own personal story, Ed, drove you into this place? And when I say this place, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you are on the pinnacle of this peppery thing. People whisper your name reverently now.

It's very strange. A lot of people say it. I don't, you know, I'm just another guy trying to, you know, literally build a business for my kids. and for the people who work for me so that they can succeed later on in life. It's very hard for me to hear that I am the pinnacle, but everywhere I go, that's what they tell me. This is all a culmination of very hard life

that I got grace, redemption, and mercy and was able to turn it around and apply the knowledge I had for the good instead of just self-destruction. You know, when we come out with Pepper X, all the people who doubt Pepper X are going to go, oh, you know, now can we have it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's really not about Pepper X. It's about what can we do with Pepper X, you know?

And it's not about Pepper Y. It's what we can do with Pepper Y. And how can I serve first God, then my family, then my community, then the people who, you know, rely on me? How can I serve them with the next step in this progression? It's a lot, right? Yeah, you saw there's a lot that goes into this. Had I had a chance to do it again, had I known what I was filming when I was there filming,

I would have probably spent more time with your staff and your crew because they all are on a similar, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but it seems like collectively you and yours have found a path out of kind of a crappy life rooted in addiction and all sorts of bad things. Not to overstate it, but it feels like Pepper X could just as easily be called the redemption fruit. Yeah, it could be. And even the people who are not in recovery have all come from a place that is similar to being in addiction, okay? So really, we all are on the same path. I just, you know, I don't know why God chose me to lead this team of misfits.

And that's just the way it is. I really enjoy what I get to do, okay? Because every day I wake up, I get on my knees. Well, sometimes I don't get on my knees. They kind of hurt sometimes now. Every morning, I start with saying, hey, God, what's your will for me today? Let's see what this adventure is going to be. And I have no idea how the day is going to plan out.

I have found that if I plan my day, other than stuff like this, it's going to get changed. So I just decided, let's go to the farm. Let's find out what's going on there. That lets me know what I got it. do, then the factory, then the store, you know? And that lets me know what my day's got to be, not, you know, Ed's big plan for taking over the world, you know? That's the first thing that you told me that really resonated on a personal level. I feel the same way. I feel the same way about making TV. I feel the same way about this conversation.

I know basically what I want to get to, but I have no idea how we're going to get there or in what order. It's really a balancing act, isn't it? Because you're trying to build. a business, like a real multi-million dollar going concern. And you can't just Forrest Gump your way through that entirely, unless, of course, you can. Well, sometimes we do. But more times than not, the Forrest Gump turns out to be a good thing. Everybody also say no. I'll say, well, you know, yeah. Stupid is, as stupid does. And it turns out to be a great thing. Our partnership with the People at Heatness and Hot Ones is a Forrest Gump moment. It really is.

Tell me about that show. What was it like to watch? It's Chris Evans, right? Mm-hmm. For those of you who don't know. Sean Evans. Sean Evans. I put you out there for the next season.

You better call him Sean. Sorry. Isn't there a Chris Evans out there? Yeah, there is. Yeah, there's probably an Ed Curry and a Chuck Klaus Meyer and a Mike wrote too. But watching that show, like 8 million. views every episode on YouTube, it looks like. That must have been interesting for you to see literally a show evolve around your product.

Yeah, literally, I got involved with them. I got to reach out from a friend saying a mutual friend Chili Clause was in town and they were looking for some reapers to eat on this new show hot ones. Did I have any reapers? And I was like, yeah, I got reapers and where did they need them go? you know, and I brought them up to New York. And Chili Claus and Sean ate Reapers. I think they were in McSorleys when they ate them.

The very next New York hot sauce show, they all came to visit me, and they were like, wow, you make hot sauce too? And I was like, yeah, I make hot sauce too, you know. It's the buck or about pepper company. I met a man named Noah Schaumburg, who runs the heatnist. You know, he's the one who presents the sauce. to them to try to decide what's going to be on the lineup. And I was say, hey, kid, you want to present some sauces to us?

And I was like, yeah. And it turns out, you know, by the next year, we were making hot sauces directly for hot ones. You know, we were making their branded sauces. And it's just grown from there. Honestly, you know, they're really, really good people. I mean, all of them, the whole complex team, is they're amazing people. I feel like I have, when I'm in New York, I have family there. I have people that I can talk to, people who care about me.

One of the producers just gave me a call the other day to see how I was doing, you know? That's the kind of people they are. They're like you guys, you know. I hear from Ben all the time. I don't hear from you very much, but I do hear from Ben all the time. Ben loves you, man. I know, but it's just like relationship is more. important to me than selling something.

Okay? Selling something's going to happen. I'm an old dope dealer. I can sell anything, okay? I'll sell it if I need to. But it's not about the selling part. It's about forming relationships and trying to share values and making something that everybody is going to benefit from.

That's what they're like. So the symbiism between us was too hard to ignore. And it's only going to go higher. I get that. But let me ask you, is it really about creating something for everyone? Or is it about creating something specifically that isn't for everyone that maybe challenges everyone? But, I mean, there are a lot of people who don't eat hot food because they affirmatively don't like it. Those are lovely people.

And then there are people who can tolerate it a little bit, but not a lot. And then there's the rest of you crazy pepperheads. So what I've learned over the years is that you have to take care of all of those segments. Okay. And we do their mildest sauce and we do their hottest sauce. I can hurt people or I can make people enjoy what they're eating. I know what I'm doing. You know, we can go anywhere in between.

And I'll give you an example. I made these sauces last fall that, you know, we got really positive feedback on. I make test batches. I shoot them out to a bunch of people. We got good feedback. I only made hot ones. But I made mild ones when we did the production runs, too. Same sauce, same recipe.

One has jalapeno. The other one is stupid. Okay. Guess what? the jalapino version is outselling the stupid one approximately one and a half to one. The milder people like their sauce, okay? And then they share it with those who don't like sauce at all, say, just give this a little try. And they're like, oh, that is not so bad.

Right. Okay. But by hooking them in with that mild sauce, I'm getting ready to give them the real dope, you know, slowly. But surely we'll get them to try it. something else. Just the tip, as we said on the show, I believe. Yeah. Eventually, even the people who swear they'd never try a Reaper, they always wind up trying a Reaper. Some take me six months, some take a year, some take a little longer. But I always get them to try. When did you know? When did you know the pepper would be the hinge upon which your life pivoted? And how did you get

to the Reaper. Okay, well, I got to the Reaper by breeding a pepper. I got, back when I lived in Detroit, there was a doctor from Pakistan. He had been a royal Saudi doctor, and he had a place in Gross Point right on the water. It was beautiful. He used to bring me back peppers. Him and his kids would bring me back peppers from Pakistan, back when you weren't allowed to go to Pakistan.

And I liked those peppers, so I kept those seeds and kept on growing. them. And then a woman named Joan up at, it was First Union at the time, she was from St. Vincent. And Joan kept on telling me, I don't know pepper, okay, because I bring her in peppers and hot sauce for her and her husband. And she bought me a pepper from St. Vincent off the volcano Losophoree. And I bred that pepper from Las Zofari with nine other peppers. Okay, that was the HP line, higher power line. we had a whole bunch of different things we were breeding in the back that one happened to be HP that's where the Reaper originated from when I knew that it was something special I did a contest

called the Charlotte Ventures okay and I was like fourth in line to do my presentation this was for $50,000 and we needed the money you know we needed the money at the time and the first person who presented was a woman doctor. And I've got a staff of 400. We want to bring on two more researchers. I've come up with a pinprick test for a breast cancer that's 90% accurate. You know? And she talked a bunch of science.

The next guy was a doctor who was using nanorobots to deliver chemotherapy into cancer patients, targeting the cancer cells with 10% of the side effects of normal. chemotherapy. And the next one was doing, they were doing something with lung cancer. And so I got up and I said, I'm smoking egg curry. I invented the hottest pepper in the world and I don't belong here. You know? And I got third place. Ha! Okay. But that doctor with the nanorobots, he and I started talking and he was looking at my research and he was looking at other research that I showed him. And he goes, man, you got something here. And I wasn't. looking to get the hottest pepper in the world. It was testing as the hottest pepper in the world.

But what people don't know is it's very high in a subcapsinoid that has a key on it, that when you get it to a cancer cell, it causes an autoimmune sequence that kills the cell. And it's missing another capsinoid that's prevalent in that species of pepper. So we have something special here that the medical community is looking at. Not too far after that, a doctor from Sloan Kettering talked about the cancer research. And there was a lot of stuff going on in the background. I knew I had something because all these doctors were telling me I had something. Okay.

And, you know, I'm no doctor. I've done a lot of a lot of different things. And I know basic chemistry and basic botany and things like that. But these guys really let me know there was something special going on. I really didn't care about it being the hottest pepper in the world until people started challenging me on Facebook. And I didn't find out about it until they started challenging me. I never used Facebook really before that, you know, just taking pictures and stuff. But it took four years to get the Guinness World Record.

And then I knew I really had something special because people came at me from all over the world, you know. But it just seems like two totally different verticals, right? Like you're in the food business and you're building something that people like it because it tasted good and it makes their food interesting versus curing cancer. There's a lot of science, okay, that shows that natural things are better for you in challenging diseases than the chemicals that they've come up with through the pharmaceutical industry. And I'm not degrading those at all because, like, my mother had lung cancer. She suffered for a long time. The medicine kept her alive, and that's what she wanted from it, because she wanted to see her grandchildren. You know, so everything has its place.

I just think that there are things out there. We used to cure disease with natural things before the 60s, and there is science that shows those things work. It's just now pushed aside by advertising you need a pill instead of eating healthy. You need, you know, to buy this bottled water instead of drinking spring water. You need to, you know, different. Remember, we talked about the greed factor. Sure. Greed came into play in the mid-80s when people started making a lot of money in the Financial Institute.

I was part of that. I wanted big money for big drugs. So the greed factor came in, and it wasn't about how can we help people. It's about how we can take advantage of people. And that has just proliferated until, you know, the last few years, a lot of businessmen that I know have started looking into how they can serve their customer base instead of how they can grow their customer base. how they can, you know, how they can serve their communities instead of how can I make money off of this. Is there a link, Ed, between the potency of the peppers themselves, like the hotter they get, are the doctors telling you that that's going to be the proximate cause of some new cure, essentially?

Yes, that is essentially it. There's a doctor up at Sanford who's doing obesity studies with kids. okay? And he is using Carolina Reaper specifically because of the properties inside of Carolina Reaper in his regiment to get these kids from being morbidly obese back to a normal weight and stop producing yellow fat and start producing brown fat. Now it's in conjunction with other things. He specifically states that it's the compounds in the Reaper that are accelerating this process. I made a joke. I was like, okay, so they got chronic diarrhea, you know? Yeah, the pounds really come off.

Yeah, the pounds come off. But it's not like that at all. It's used medicinally in very small doses to keep their metabolisms accelerated and to help switch that sugar addiction. It's just our brains wanting drugs. Okay, the sugar is just like heroin is just like pot. or alcohol or whatever, is our brain craving that drug. And when you fill those receptors that are looking for that certain drug, that drug doesn't mean much anymore. The receptors are already filled. So it helps wean off of the addictive, bad things and put it back in good things, like eating healthily.

And, you know, I don't look like I eat healthy. I actually do with the exception of ice cream. Yeah, but once upon a time, Ed, once upon a time, if I remember right, you were tipping the scales at 360, 370, something like that? 368 was what I weighed when I went into treatment. I started drinking and doing drugs at a very young age. Probably by 13, I was a full-blown addict. Just could not live a day without it.

And I did everything I could to get what I need. Okay, from Robin, my parents' liquor cabinet to, you know, we used to do things back in the 70s, you could pimp liquor, you know, people, someone old enough would take five bucks from you and get your pint of whatever and they'd keep the change, that kind of thing, you know. But I had to, you know, sell drugs to get the money to get liquor and drugs, you know, and I just, I spiraled down that. I was successful, you know, I went to college, did a whole bunch of other stuff. started the research on peppers, got jobs. I mean, I was successful at what I was doing. But in the background, I was drinking it all day long every day and getting high all day long every day.

And it got to a point where there was no other goal. Okay, really, there was no other goal. Everything I did was to get to that next fix, no matter what that fix was. and it really, it took me to a real dark place to the point where, you know, my family wasn't talking to me, really. You know, my friends weren't talking to me unless they wanted to get high or drunk, you know. My wife had left me. It was really bad, you know. But I decided to kill myself one night, and I was going to do that by drinking myself to death and doing as much cocaine as I could.

I had forgotten that I had all this other dope in the house that would have gone it a whole lot faster because I was so focused on what my mission was, you know. And it was a blizzard in Michigan at the time. There was a shit ton of snow coming down. If you've ever been to Michigan in January, it's cold as hell. It's cold. Just cold as hell. And Ed, this is what, 20 years ago?

Yeah, 99, January of 99. 24 years ago. 24 years. All right, go ahead. So I had opened the doors and windows to my little condo there, and I stripped naked, which had to be a sight to see, you know. You're 368 pounds. You're naked?

I thought I was God's gift to women then, you know. The only reason any woman talked to me was to get high, you know. But I sat at the table, and I literally started drinking myself to death. At the time, I was pounding down about a gallon and a half a liquor a day. I mean, I had a serious habit going. Yeah, I didn't eat for like a half a year. All I did was drink Slim Fast in vodka. That was my nutrition.

And, you know, I'm not trying to apostolize to anybody, but I saw an angel, okay? There was snow in my house, and there was no footprints. A literal angel. A literal angel. literal angel. It was an aberration and it kind of freaked me out. This aberration told me to go to Brighton Hospital. And I was like, oh, okay, I'll go to Brighton Hospital. That sounds like a good idea. So at the time I had two cars out there and one was a Camero R-S-T-top. Okay? And instead of taking the safe vehicle out into the blizzard, I loaded up the Camero with alcohol and drugs and some clothes and

guns and I drove out into the blizzard to find Brighton hospital. Hold on, Ed. Hold on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If we're going to go there, I'm pretty sure I know what Chuck is going to ask, but I'm not positive, but I mean, let's, we can't gloss over the angel. Okay. Boy girl, androgynous. It was female. It was definitely female. It had boobs, you know, so it was bright white. I mean, bright white. And it Like radiating light or like light coming externally? No, just lit up. I really didn't, you know, it was kind of like backlighting, but forward lighting too. Okay, there was, the light came through the door and there was this angel there.

And the angel was whiter than the light behind it. Okay, and that's what I saw. And all it said to me is you need to go to Brighton Hospital. And I was, okay. Well, yeah, so my question is, so this angel, and you know immediately it's an angel, it's some sort of, I mean, you described as an apparition. I had no idea what the hell it was, okay? But you said, I'm going to do with this, whatever this is telling me to do. I was pretty lit at the time. I was willing to do just about anything, okay.

Did you feel in any distress at all like you needed to go to the hospital? All that feeling I had inside of wanting to kill myself and all that like fear and, and, and, shame and guilt, it just, boom. You need to go to Brighton Hospital now. Okay, Ed, let's back. And I literally started packing. It was an immediate thing. The thing disappeared.

I looked for footprints because I thought, oh, wow, that was pretty cool, but there were no footprints, you know? And that was that, man. Within 20 minutes, I was in the car. Do do, do, do, do, do do. Dumb. I love stories. like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still

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But I don't know what normal is, and I don't know if there's any change, okay? I didn't at the time. I only knew that I started shaking if I went more in an hour without drinking or getting high. I knew I got sick if it got to two hours. You know, that's all I knew in life. Dude, this is an amazing, I mean, holy cow. Well, it's the truth, you know. My legal team doesn't like me talking about it, but it's the truth.

Okay, and that's, yeah, I cannot deny the miracle that happened to me. All right, that's just it. So go on. So I get in the car, I go out in the Camaro and the snow, which is the brightest idea in the whole world, you know, just in case I need the T-tops. I don't know what I was thinking. But I started driving around.

I knew where Brighton, Michigan was, so I kind of figure Brighton Hospital was out there. It's not in any phone books, okay? Because at the time, Internet was, you know, you saw the AOL things at the grocery store, but there really was no internet. And it wasn't on the internet that I had. I started driving around Brighton.

I was like, this is useless. And I went to a friend's house that was in the next town down, Wixom Lake. And they were like, what are you doing? I saw an angel. I'm trying to get to Brighton Hospital. They were like, Ed, have a drink, you know, calm down. And I was just too hyper for it. So overnight, they went to sleep.

because this was like two in the morning. And then the next morning, they had talked with my family, told them what was going on, and said, we know where the sign is for Brighton Hospital. And I got some liquor because I don't like going anywhere without having enough liquor with me. And we were getting high and stuff. And we get to Brighton Hospital and I knocked on the door.

And they said, what do you want? And I said, an angel sent me here, you know. And they were like, oh, come on in. You know. We have an angel wings set up right over here. We get this all the time. Yeah, sure. And they sat me down and they started talking about rehab.

And I was like, oh, I'm in the wrong place. This isn't where the angel sent me. You know, I was immediately, hey, we got to get out of here. Okay. This is not part of my plan. And they asked me if I had a problem and I said, no, I don't have a problem with anything. You know? and Carl, who was with me, handed me a flask of Jack Daniels or Jim Beam.

I honestly don't remember which. It was bourbon. You know, a pint and I drank it down and put it down, kept on talking to them like nothing was going on. And they were like, maybe you want to sit here for a second while we talk. Okay. And then some old guy came in who I later found out was like one of the texts there and he's trying to talk to me. They're trying to, you know, get me to fill out this thing. And I was like, okay, I'll stay the night, you know.

And like five days later, I woke up when they were jabbing, being a barb in my ass to keep me from convulsing. So how long were you there total? I stayed there for 33 days. I didn't want to leave, you know. My insurance at the time covered like two weeks. I had that, you know, Detroit area union insurance. You know, you got a two-week vacation in the winter, two-week vacation in the summer for substance abuse,

but you couldn't do more than two weeks at a time. I didn't even know my insurance was paying. My attorney came. I said, you just write them whatever checks they need. And I stayed there until they told me I had to go. You know, then I stayed there for another 32 months. 33 months in total. I didn't stay at the hospital that whole time, but I was in, I stayed at a place on a lake that was about a mile away. I thought I had lost my license. It turns out I never

had lost my license. So I started walking back and forth to the hospital every day. How far? It was, you know, a mile and a half, two miles. So is that how you started to lose weight as well? Oh, yeah. By the time I left Brighton Hospital, I was down to 165 pounds. Okay. Yeah, and feeling pretty good about myself. You lost 200 pounds. So wait a minute. Yeah. Just to recap, you're 368 pounds. You're at the bottom of the barrel. You open up your condo. It's freezing cold. The snow blows in. You take off all your clothes and you drink all the liquor you can find. An angel comes, tells you to go to Brighton Hospital, you go, you stay for 33 days, and then you come and go, walking back and forth to the hospital for another three years?

Yeah, essentially, less than three years. You lose 200 pounds in the course of this, and basically, when did you believe you had beaten your addiction, or do you believe you've beaten it? Or do you believe you've just replaced it with caps apsacin? I believe that God has relieved me of the want or need for any mood-altering, mind-changing substance that might be illegal at this time or not illegal at this time. I have no desire to get high in any way, shape, or form. However, I would be remiss in not saying that I catch a pretty good buzz off of peppers and caffeine. Okay. One of the reasons I lost so much weight is because I pretty much lived on cigarettes and caffeine that whole time. Well, I was at the hospital. That coffee was going 24-7, you know.

And I learned to eat properly and found out that I didn't really need that much food to live, you know. I am just amazed at the quantities of food you get at a restaurant now. Now, don't get me wrong, I might chow all that down, but then I'm not eating again until dinner the next night, and I'm regretting my decision. And that's just a snap decision because, you know, I'm addicted to everything, including food, you know. Quick sidebar then. I just talked to a guy named Michael Easter who wrote a book. In fact, he wrote this book. It's called The Comfort Crisis.

Mm-hmm. And one of the things we talked about at length was the difference between being hungry. and feeling hungry. There's a big difference. Right. And he talks a lot about this where it's like, look, every diet that seems to be out there that gets all the sexy attention and gets all of the press is rooted in what you eat, when you eat it, or that's basically it, right?

What you eat and when you eat it. But really, why you eat and directly related to how much the portions, that seems to be really, really at the heart of any successful weight loss story. So I guess my question is, how did hunger play in to all of this, the feeling of it versus the reality of it? Are you talking about when I was getting clean or today? I guess maybe both. Sorry, let me reframe it because it's like what I'm really asking is can you trust your feelings? If you feel hungry, can you trust that? If you feel like you need a drink, is that withdrawal or is that a feeling that you can trust? If you feel like the pepper is hot, we've already learned that it's actually not. It's just your brain telling you that it is. So if you see, see an angel, did you really? Or did your brain show you something else that your body needed to experience? I don't have any answers to these things, but it seems like somehow or another a conversation about peppers and what's hot and what isn't brings this right into the center

of something maybe a little larger. All right. Well, first and foremost, your first question, you know, feelings. Feelings are not facts, okay? I can feel. I can feel. like I am a tree. That does not make me a tree. Okay. Feelings are not facts. Feelings are valid. Okay. You have the right to your own feelings, but very rarely are feelings facts unless they have to do with relationship. Okay. Those are feeling like I'm talking about love. All right. I love my wife. That is a valid feeling. I love my children, that's a valid feeling. I love peppers. That's valid. I love to eat a dozen donuts is not valid. Okay. That is just gluttony. All right. So feelings are not facts at all. And the feeling of hunger, what I have found, okay, is that when I have a negative emotion or feeling going on in myself,

Like, damn it, when's that check going to come? My first thought is instant gratification. Can I get a coffee? Okay? Can I get a candy bar? Can I go down to the peach stand and get a dozen donuts? Can I, you know, something to give me instant gratification? Instead of acknowledging that that's just fear, okay?

And fear is a lack of faith. and if I truly believe that God is in charge of my life, and I don't care what God you have, you have the right to your own God. But if you believe the God of your understanding is in charge of your life, then fear's got no place but to be a fleeting thought in your head.

And it's when we replace that fear with a feeling that we're getting into our egos and self-gratifying. So, like for myself, I don't like, I'm not really hungry during the day. I start my day with coffee and tincture, you know. I have more coffee during the day. I drink a lot of water. I get hungry.

I feel hungry when I see someone else eat. I feel hungry when I see the Springs farm truck go by and I think about donuts or any of those other pastries, those wonderful ladies in the bakery make. but I don't actually have hunger pains until around 4 or 5 o'clock in the evening. Then I eat a meal. And I eat that meal, you know, on a normal day, you know, is somewhere between 800 and 1400 calories. And I make sure not to have much dairy because I really like ice cream. So then I portion out another apprifice.

approximately 400 to 600 calories of ice cream. So I'm staying within my 200,000 calorie diet. Okay. And I'm getting the gratification I want from my sugar rush and enjoying a healthy meal. That's all the food I need. But like my wife, she has to eat four or five times a day. Now, she eats little amounts. But she eats four or five times a day because she has actual hunger.

not just a feeling of wanting to eat. So we have a very big misconception in this country that bigger is better. Okay. There's a place around the corner that opened up. It's a chicken place, okay? And they have some of the very best chicken fingers in the whole world. But they serve it with a pile of French fries that's bigger than my head, you know? And I keep on telling them, I don't need that.

many french fries i just want a few you know and they're like no this is the serving size it's a pound and a half of french fries if you eat that you're going to get sick and die okay but people eat that stuff i watched a woman the other day eat a double order while we're there and i was like how can you put that many french fries in your body yeah but ed you got to know people are looking at you people are looking at your product. People are looking at the hot ones. People are looking at the show I just saw you do on Netflix and they're saying, how in the hell can you put that in your body? Why would anybody put something with 1.6 or 2.5 million Scoville heat units into their body? You know? Okay. And look, I'm going to go back to this book again. The reason I think I'm interested,

and I didn't know this until we just got into it, but it's like you make a product that makes people uncomfortable. But in that discomfort, there is something addictive and really interesting to both watch and experience. So riff on that, my friend. Okay, well, the reason I consume massive quantities of super hot peppers, okay, is one,

it raises my metabolism. It keeps me going all day long. In raising my metabolism, It helps me with my gluttony that I have when I see sugars. Okay, so by keeping that metabolism up, if I happen to relapse on a sugar, I am also burning more calories and not going to that pancreatic reaction with sugars that causes yellow fat to produce. Two, I truly believe in science is proving of the cancer-fighting properties of peppers. And like I told you, my family dies a heart disease and cancer.

I want to live a long time. Even though I do some bad things, I want to live a long time because I got little kids. Three, there's, you know, the properties that help with the bloodstream, all right? And getting those capsinoids into the bloodstream delivers it to your brain, releasing endorphine and dopamine and other chemicals into your body that help keep your blood clean. Four, it gets me high as a kite. Okay, so I'm really enjoying it. Okay?

I enjoy the heck out of it because I have built up the tolerance that that marathon runner builds up or that triathlon athlete builds up. I have built up my tolerance to the pain to the point where the pain is temporary and the pleasure is lasting. And that's where that whole group of people start coming in. They're building up to that point where, okay, this is enjoyable. And if I snuck some Reaper into your food, you wouldn't notice when I started doing it. But by the time you spend a month with me, I'll have you eating enough super hot that you'll be pissing fire. Okay.

But it's good for you. It's not comfortable, but it's good for you. go. That's what I'm getting. Go ahead, Chuck. I have a couple of questions. Twice now, you've mentioned yellow fat, but you also mentioned it in a connection with brown fat, as if one is good, one is bad, and can you explain that? Well, that goes back to our evolution, as it may be. Okay. There are certain things in science that you can't deny that are not explained by other spiritual journeys. All right. So, yellow fat is this okay this stuff hanging right here is yellow fat all right that is fat caused by a liver pancreas reaction to sugars carbohydrates things like that there's too much going on so you

get an insulin spike and you get yellow fat as storage of energy units brown fat is insulation I've been reading this study and I read this book about a guy who, people in northern climates who bathe regularly in cold water look huge, but they have very little yellow fat on their bodies. They have a tremendous amount of brown fat. That brown fat is the insulation that keeps the body warm while exposed to cold. Brown fat is also a unit of storage for energy, but it's a much different structure. And our bodies don't start producing really the yellow fat until we start becoming gluttonous, and the pancreas cannot keep up with the amount of carbohydrates and sugars that we are consuming. And if you look at all the processed foods that people are eating, like the chicken nuggets,

and all that other crap. They have added those things in to make us get the insulin spike to start that sugar addiction going. And by sugar, I'm not talking about white sugar, even though that's horrible for you. I'm talking about the carbs, any- Orange juice.

Yeah, orange juice. What's worse than orange juice? I mean, it's awful. So my other question is, you mentioned a tincture or something? You said you have your coffee in the morning, morning and something else. What was that something else? It's tincture. It's a pepper oil. Hold on. This is a good one, Chuck. He gave me some of this. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It is good.

Oh, he gave it to you for your tooth, right? Yeah. Yeah, just second. Yeah, he's going to go get some. Remember Fred, our old music teacher, used to do a thing. It was called a tincture of benzoin. And he would, like when he lost his voice, he would make this tincture and he would put it in steaming boiling water and then he'd put a towel over his head, a wet towel, and just breathe the steam. And that's how he would get the stuff. You know, that doesn't do that. Did I ruin anything? Is it still going? No, no, we're good. Can you hear us? Can you hear us okay? Yeah, I can hear you just fine. So he's reaching into a bag. He's pulling out the tincture. There it is. That's pepper oil. Here's some tincture. It's pepper oil. Yeah. Okay. What I do is I take a large,

quantity of peppers. See, I carry this stuff in my backpack with me. It's usually in my pocket, but I took everything out of my pockets for the recording, so I wasn't playing with things. We appreciate that. That was damn decent of you. Yeah. So what I do is I reduce peppers in an astringent to get the oil out of it,

and then I bottle up the oil, and I put this in my coffee or... This one's actually sludge number one bottle one. This was something that I made a while ago that I was going to present to Sean Evans the next time I was up in New York. I've been doing this filming with another company. But I don't know. See, it's just a really thick, gooey, nasty oil. It looks like tar and, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's just horrible. I mean, horrible. Well, you really know how to sell it. Yeah, but look, we just watch what happens in five minutes. Yeah? Yeah. But like just taking that, the physiological, everything that happens to you is going to happen to me. My eyes might water, my skin might flush.

I'm having a hard time talking right now because the saliva is just going crazy. But my heart rate is elevating. And my brain already knows what's going to happen. So I'm getting excited about it. that dopamine rush that's coming in just a second or two. So everybody listening knows, like, how much did you take? It looked like a very little, tiny little bit. Right there.

A little bit, just a drop on the edge of my tongue. Wow. Okay. But it's, you know, the sludge is like black tar heroin. You know, it's some good stuff. There is a mild a version that we gave Zach called Ignition Point, you know, but he didn't do too well. You know what?

If I go on Sean's show, can you help prepare me? Like, is there like a flight of stuff you can get me that I can meet? Because you can build up, right? Some level of tolerance, clearly. Yeah, well, I was going to send you stuff last Christmas, but they told me you wouldn't eat it. So I send you a cake instead. All right.

I'll make sure you have the proper address. Yeah, give me the address, and I'll send your stuff with instructions on each one, just so you know what's going on. The thing about his show, and again, it's probably too much inside baseball here, but is it called First We Feast or The Hot Ones? The Hot Ones is the show. First We Feast is the company. Right.

So Sean Evans is essentially Charlie Rose. He sits down one-on-one and he interviews people of some note. And before each question, they put some hot sauce on a chicken wing and they eat the chicken wing. And the sauces gets hotter and hotter and hotter. to the point where, you know, Gordon Ramsey or Colin Farrell or whoever he has on, they're, they're in obvious discomfort. But what makes the show great is that Sean is really a good interviewer. He's prepared and he asks great questions.

And so it's just a fun way to watch an interview and probably sell a bunch of hot sauce along the way. Also, if you notice, he's doing the same thing they are. And he really, through the milder sauces, he forms a familiar. a relationship with all of them before taking them into the journey of the hot stuff, you know? Yeah. That way they're comfortable and they understand that this is not, you know, I'm not just here to hurt you.

We're having a dialogue. Yeah. He is genuinely an excellent man. I mean, I think you guys would get along really well. Well, look, we're singing out of the same hymn book. I mean, Dirty Jobs is a talk show, right? Mm-hmm. But it's based on the idea that the people,

who are being interviewed are going to be able to do something that makes them comfortable or makes me uncomfortable because it's my first day in the sewer. But if you're going to interview a sewer inspector, don't put on makeup and set him down in a studio, put him in the sewer and let him do the job that he's used to doing. I get that. Yeah, but you got pretty comfortable doing jobs with me, didn't you? Oh, well, that wasn't dirty jobs. That's the thing.

I didn't know what we were doing. I was just stopping by a little place in Fort Mill to meet the guy who made the hottest pepper in the world. And when we left, you nearly killed my friend, Zach. And I thought, you know, this is interesting. And I know there's a bigger story than what we got that day. I still feel like I'm just scratching the surface because bottom line, dude, you're a man of science who could talk at length about nutrition, who saw an angel lost 200 pounds. walk in his way out of recovery.

It's no wonder your imaginary PR people over there at the puck or butt farm have their butts puckered because who knows what the hell you're going to say next from a business standpoint. I can't even imagine trying to handle you. I think they've just given up, honestly. I do. Because we have meetings every week where I'm told, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And if you tell me no, that just means yes to me, you know. Three Nose is a yes. You're not the first person to ask me about preparation for that show. Many of them have. But a really funny one, a really funny one. I get a call. I'm at the farm, grinding pepper. You saw what that operation is.

I did. And the phone keeps on ringing, and I finally answer it. And he goes, is this smoking Ed? And I said, yes. This is David Blaine. I was like, yeah, right, it is. And I hung up. Okay.

All right. So then Heather calls me a couple minutes later, and she's like, oh, my God, David Blaine just called the store. I gave him your number. So I had to call back and apologize, you know. He's a cool guy, too. He sent stuff for my kids, all sorts of. He's a really nice guy. But he's like, I'm a little bit trepidacious about eating these super hot things.

And I was like, don't be trepidious, you know, and I walked him through it. And then he came up with an idea of me doing a magic trick with him through. his phone and it was amazing stuff. But people call them, they're like, how do I prepare? Well, there's no preparing for being who you are. Don't even think about the hot sauces. Just be who you are and everything's going to be okay. It's all right if you snot a little on, you know, national television. It's okay. Believe me, I'm not worried about snotting a little on TV. I've been there. Here's what worries me. He's thrown up on TV. I've thrown up on TV. I've cracked my pants on TV. I've humiliated myself on TV. It's not that. What haunts me is a little bit of PTSD from a moment I had in a hotel room, probably 25 years ago. I was in the Mondrian Hotel in L.A. and I was in the middle of a business meeting with half a dozen people. And we ordered room service and I ordered a club sandwich. And on the plate was some sort of a pepper.

know, and I ate a couple bites of the sandwich, and then I took a bite of the pepper. And then I went back to the sandwich, but then I put the sandwich down because I started to hear like an alarm. And then I started to lose my peripheral vision. And then I started to panic because the pain was unlike anything I'd felt. So I don't know what kind of pepper this was, Ed, but all I can tell you is I stood up and I had to go into the bathroom stupidly, I guess, just turned on the water and just like dushed my mouth out. I stuck my head in the sink with the water just running into my mouth for about 20 minutes. And how did that work for you? Not well, Ed. Not well. It did nothing made it better. I couldn't talk. I was of no use to anybody else in the meeting.

I just sat there on the toilet until everyone left, just making my peace with God atoning as best I good for my many sins and just hoping that whoever put that thing on the plate would die a painful death somehow? Because why would you do that? Why would you put a thing like that on the plate if it's not to be eaten? Well, you just proved the chemistry of peppers to me. It took 20 minutes for it to go away. That chemical reaction, no matter what you did, kept on going and kept you in that flight response. I won't call you the same thing I called Zach because you were unprepared. All right? I was.

Yeah, you really were. We could do some rounds of karate or something. I could punch you in the face, whatever you want. But there is no preparing for a journey like you're going to have on hot ones if you get it. And that's exactly what I've told everybody else. You know, one of them was like, I've been having an extra spoonful of Tabasco every day. I'm like, you're drinking vinegar water. This is not hot sauce.

And I love the guys at Tabasco, and I have use for it. but it is not hot sauce. They are two totally different animals. I just hope they pick you because I think it would be a really fun interview. I really do. I don't know what to hope for, honestly, but look, with our remaining time,

I do want to ask you about this thing I just watched on Netflix because I just thought it was really well done. The show's called We're the Champions and the second episode, they look for the ultimate champion of chili eaters. And you're not in the competition, but you're providing the fuel. And so what was that whole deal like?

Well, you know, they approached me very shortly before we were going to do it. And they said, we want to do this. We're doing this cheese roll thing. And he explained the cheese rolling thing. And I was like, after he talked about that, I love the cheese rolling thing. So I said, okay, I'll do it. We'll do whatever you need. And then the attorneys got involved.

And everybody was like, we got to protect. You know how attorneys are. I do. So I didn't even know if the thing was going to go off. But we planned on, they were like, can we use Pepper X? And I said, no, you can't. But I've got a lot of peppers that are hotter than the Reaper. We can use some of these other peppers that we're not using for anything else.

And they said, okay, we're going to invite some people from around the world for this international chili eating contest. And I was like, okay, we can do that. We'll do it in Fort Mill. I gave them some names. They kind of turned it around on me. They wanted to focus on these people from around the world and make them the heroes, you know? And I was like, you know, pepper eating is not about that. And I said, let me get a few people in.

They said, yeah, you can bring some people in, but we've got the best in the world. You were right. These are the right guys. You know, so I called some of my friends that I know can really eat chilies and can beat any of those people. okay and I kind of set them up and they got everything all ready to go we were filming for geez three or four days straight I mean literally from 5 a.m. till you know god awful 30 in the morning it was a real professional crew I didn't see the need for 30 people running around you know we could have done that with eight people you know but it turned out really well I see it now

that it's done. Yeah, looks great. I just thought it was a bother and I hate following direction, you know, and they keep on their, I tell, no, we need you to do this and I wouldn't do it and they get all mad. No, we need you to do it. I wouldn't do it. And they get all mad, you know. So there were a lot of takes of me sitting in a really freaking hot greenhouse because I wasn't following direction. But the day of the contest came, okay, and they had their ringers set. Okay. They were going to like Johnny or Brianna or Sid the champ. And Brianna and Sid are good chili eaters. But I had this guy I knew from L.A. Dustin, who's just a, he's a beast.

And I knew Bella and Brandon and their beast. And I had a couple of other people from local who are beasts, you know, including Tom, who works for me. And they had their people all lined up. And they had filmed with them. them and made this big glorious thing. And then we get to the contest and I'm like, oh, yeah, here we go. You know, there people start dropping out like hot cakes, you know.

I love Johnny, but I've never seen him win anything. I know, you know, he's good for show. You know, he's a good guy for the chili community. He's a good ambassador. But it's, you know, Tom can eat more chilies than him. You know, that's just the way it is. So like this exotic belly dancer, Satea, Satya, Sotia, however you say her name, I always, I know her real name. I just use that.

She's chowing down and people are like, oh my God. And Brandon's wife, Bella, is like really chowing down, you know? She was amazing. This is the woman with like the red hair. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the backstory to that is they needed the money. I invited them down.

They said, we can't afford it. I said, I'll pay, come on. And they needed the money to pay some bills for their kids, you know. They really needed the money. And she had never, ever been in a chili eating contest before that. That's amazing. But I knew she had tolerance. Well, she was a recovering addict too, right?

Yeah, yeah. So slowly but surely, their ringers all bit the dust, okay? And we were left with Sid, who I love from England. I got to say my favorite line because she always says, the Chili's get stuck in my bad English teeth. And I got to, you know, say, I got to say, it's her bad English teeth. There's going to be her downfall, you know, with my bad English teeth, you know.

But no doubt. Sid dropped out, and then it was just Heather and this other guy, Dustin, who's called the Atomic Menace. And this guy sits there in each chilies. There's a video of him eating like 190 chilies or something in a row playing Rubik's Cube, you know? Yeah. And he just sits there solving Rubik's cubes. Well, do you think he's one of those guys who just doesn't feel it?

Or has he just? The next morning I made him throw up. So he still doesn't admit to that. But we were standing outside the bathroom laughing while he was puking. So would you give him? pushed him over the edge. A new pepper. I let him try a new pepper without being prepared.

Because it's a mind game, you know, going that far. There was one TV show that had me eat 17 Reapers in a row. We were doing fast takes, you know, they kept on saying, do it again, do it again, do it again, do it again. Finally, Brett told him he was going to punch them in the face if they said it one more time. You know, another time I ate 23 in a row. It's a mind game.

The pain is tremendous in your gut when you get that much capsaic. But it's, you know, it's got to be up here. And I think Dustin has it up here. If he doesn't go through his preparation, it just throws him off. Because I've seen him in contests where he didn't do well. But Bella and him were going head to head. And you met Linda, right? Oh, yeah.

So Linda's texting me on the phone. And she keeps on calling. And she's like, you give that girl the girl the girl. grand prize. You give that girl the grand prize. You give that girl the grand prize. You know? And finally, it came down to the speed eating and she just couldn't do it. She almost did it, but she couldn't do it. And Dustin got it. All right. And then I told her up on stage while she was in tears. I whispered her in her or I'm giving you the $1,000 too. And that's when you see your smile when I leaned over and whisper to her.

But what the public doesn't know is I hired her and Brandon on the spot. I said, I'm going to move you guys down. And you guys are going to come work for me and we'll take care of you. Are they working on the farm now? Yeah. They've worked for me since then. Okay, since that film. Brandon's the guy who set up the microphone and everything.

Brandon set up the mics. He's here. Ballet, she's here now too. She's home from work. They're both here. Why, do you want me to grab them? No, no, it's okay. I was just suddenly it's all kind of coming together. I knew I recognized Brandon from somewhere, but he wasn't there when I was at the farm. No, you jumped, you jumped into the peppers with him. You both were standing in in my load of peppers that I had to destroy because it broke FDA rules. Sorry about that. But it was really good film. It was funny as hell. I've never coughed or sneezed so much in my life, man. That was just something else.

But yeah, that was an amazing show. And I think if we have another pepper eating contest, we might need a real MC to come do it. I just don't know if I can afford you. Listen, you can pay me in peppers. I'm going to take some steps and I'm going to incorporate these things into my life. And I don't know about the whole, what's the new one going to be on the crazy Scoville scale? Do we know? Yeah, it's like averaging 3.2 million over the last five years.

What we do, like with the Reaper, we only publish 1.642 million. That's the low average of all the tests, okay? I still have the median and the high if I want to beat my own record. There was actually a group of schools that did a study in the Yucatan that averaged over three million on the Reaper. It's easy to make peppers hot. Where does it end? What are we doing?

It's the surface of the sun. I used to think it ended in the four millions, but science and physics has proven me wrong, and I believe there's enough space inside of a new breed of peppers that we have to get one up well over seven million right now, just from the amount of space in the pepper where that capsaic-and-growing material can be. I just can't even imagine. I mean, look, the cayenne on that is. And that's why I'm on this side and you're on that side. Science plus physics plus angels equals Ed Curry.

Congrats on the business. You know, not very many people would think about hurting others with a hot of pepper when you got the hottest one in the world. But I'm already planning 10 years down the road. You're it. You're an absolute original. Thank you. So are you. You're a mold breaker.

And so is Chuck, by the way. way. Kind of you to say. Well, Mike told me that you're really not that smart, and you asked a couple of poignant questions, so I think you might be a little bit smart. I didn't say he wasn't poignant. You know what? Speaking of which, you've opened up the door, I just have one more question. I know we have to go. But I'm less concerned about what it does to my mouth and my stomach and more concerned about how it vacates my body eventually. Like, what happened to those people after the chili eating contest the next day?

Well, you know, it's commonly referred to as ring sting, okay? Those same receptors that are in your mouth and on your skin are in your rectum and on your anus. Yes. And your body can't use up all that capsaic and wants to get into your digestive system. So when it hits those receptors on the other end, you feel it just the same way going out. as it did come in it. So you experienced that pain twice and in two different places?

You know, I just made last Thursday and Friday with Tom, I made 11 new sauces. I'm doing the smoking head thing right now. And on Saturday, I went gluttonous and got a whole bunch of Chinese food, all sorts of different Asian foods. And we tried these sauces on those things. I didn't eat that much. I just went in a little gluttonous on the hot sauce. And Sunday was not a pleasant day, okay? I hadn't felt that in a long time.

All right. But, you know, I went back for more on Sunday night, so you live in a long. Sunday was not a fun day. All right, brother, we got to jump, but that was an eye-opener. I sure appreciate it. All right. I look forward to seeing you again, okay? You made an impact on my life and I want more of it.

Well, thank you. I can't imagine being anywhere near Fort Mill and not stopping by there for a little abuse. Yeah. Thanks, brother. All right. Keep it spicy. Yep, you take care.

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